Anhedonia
by Asa Valkyrie
Summary: anhedonia (n): the inability to experience pleasure. Sherlock is a lost cause. The only thing that has kept him from relapse is his work, but will that be enough? Takes place while Joan is his sober companion. Tw: graphic description of drug use, addiction, depression, mild suicidal ideation
1. Inability

Seven wisps of smoke eloquently ebbed from the staling fags, most stubbed out in a careless fashion next to him, where a companion might have sat if he had one. A few stubs he had reserved for more sinister plans, digging the smoldering ash of the butt into the fleshy part of his forearm with a blank face, his skin a veteran of abuse. Circular burns, a neat row of (nearly) white lines, scratches where the withdrawal bugs crawled under his skin, the tracks- hell, his father insisted the tattoos were some elaborate shrine of self-injury in themselves. He recounted his physical exam during his admittance into Hendale Rehab Facility, when they documented every one of his scars, put paper sleeves around his arms and made road maps of his self-hatred. They wanted him in the dual diagnosis ward of a psychiatric hospital, but dear old dad persuaded them (verbally and financially) that the drugs were the only problem, not his son himself. The shriveled butts and the resulting ash dwindled on the numbing concrete, numbing not only in the penetrating coolness of cement on a stark winter's night, but the gravity which pressed his body further into the comfortless bench. Well, one might label it a bench if its purpose were for sitting.

No, the solitary Sherlock Holmes had taken lodging on the ledge of his apartment's rooftop, his breath as visible as the smoke from his fag. But no matter how hard he concentrated on each breath, studying the pattern of air circulation from each laboured exhalation, mimicking the rudimentary breathing exercises they were taught in rehab, it wouldn't seem to turn off. See, the world was much like a room full of tv's to Sherlock; each of his senses tingled with smells, sights, sounds, micro-expressions, all fighting for his attention. Most of the time, when focused on a time-sensitive task, his high-functioning brain would revel in the challenge, healthily stimulated even when subjected to the unhealthy habits of sleepless nights and foodless days. Sometimes, however, like an exasperated primary school teacher, he needed them to stop- the voices, the observations, the counterarguments, all sporadically increasing and decreasing in volume, and when this happened, no amount of deep breathing would release the steam agitating the cogs of his mind. He supposed the nicotine didn't help, but he needed something to do with his shaking hands other than cook up a seven percent solution.

It was perfectly logical, he reasoned. His brain was, by admission of everyone he had ever met, exceptionally unique, so why, then, did everyone refuse to believe this could be, uniquely, the only solution he ever needed?

But he couldn't give into temptation, not with everything on the line. This was no testament to his inflated self-esteem, no gimmick of spontaneous self-worth; he needed to stay clean because his work was in jeopardy. Scotland Yard wouldn't have him back, not with the papers digging up every case he had ghost-solved for them, exposing their incompetency without him. And the number of times one of Lestrade's flunkies found him staggering under the shady streetlights of Brixton Hill, strung out and rambling to himself as he aimlessly dug through trash cans. No, he had a pretty good life here, a smarting yet stable relationship with Gregson, an apartment (almost) all to himself, plenty of space for experiments or case webs.

So seasoned was he in this business that he did not stop to contemplate why exactly it was that, despite his gratitude towards his current living situation, he was fingering a syringe full of smack in his coat pocket. Yes- skag, the H train, China White, an impatient plunger at his fingertip. And to know that in the knotting of a rubber strip and spitting of a needle cap, he would be so far underwater he wouldn't give a shit about the disappointment morphing Gregson's face as Holmes paced a vacuum-like cell, already jonesing for another hit. It wasn't simply his contempt for the place or his apparent multitude of mental illnesses that deterred him from opening up (his team of psychologists couldn't agree on what combination of autism, oppositional defiance, ADHD, and bipolar I with obsessive tendencies addled his brain); he stopped questioning his emotions before he hit puberty.

Sherlock stroked the familiar sterilized plastic, his pulse accelerating as need burned through his veins, as steam generated in the frantic cogs of his brain with no outlet to escape, a steady crescendo of maddening pressure, and Sherlock took the filled syringe from his pocket and helplessly gazed into the yellow, brown, orange sickly-sweet disgrace, disgust-filled redemption. He looked past the syringe to the street below, the dress shoes Joan insisted he wore to the office dangling one and a half stories above the ground. How long would it take to hit the ground? Sherlock considered this on any high building, calculated the approximated distance with his approximated weight, multiplied by 9.8, yet he knew from this height that he was not guaranteed an instant death, and this was where he faltered.

He was brought back into reality by a sudden realization that it was snowing, and had been for some time now, judging by the half centimeter of snow accumulated on the ledge. Involuntarily, he shivered, not just from the cold nipping at his reddened fingers and anesthetizing the sting of his burns, but the numbness in his heart. A second thought at most and his life would once again be in shambles, yet he could not bring himself to care. Just once, he would like to allow himself an indulgence that would never turn their back on him, and only welcomed him back into their arms when he abandoned them.

A door slammed open, three footsteps crunched on the blanketed rooftop. "Sherlock!" A woman exclaimed. Joan Watson, to be precise.


	2. Expectations

A door slammed open, three footsteps crunched on the blanketed rooftop. "Sherlock!" A woman exclaimed. Joan Watson, to be precise. Once again, he was brought back to his senses. He knew what it must look like.

Carefully, as if he were just putting his hands in his coat pockets, he deposited the syringe. He cleared his now-hoarse throat and explained over his shoulder, "It's alright, Watson. S'not what it looks like."

Her footsteps crunched as she approached him. "I've been looking for you for twenty minutes. You're going to come down with something with this amount of exposure." She chastised, standing to his right. "What are you doing anyway, calculating the number of snowflakes per square foot?

As if the cogs in Watson's brain had all clicked in synchronization, Holmes could pinpoint the shift in the air as she noticed the abandoned butts.

"C'mon," she urged in a noticeably gentler tone, a shiver in her voice. "Lets get inside."

The snow had developed from the size of confetti to large flakes, coming down rapid-fire. "I'll be in soon," he stated quietly, detaching himself from her. Nowhere in her job description did it mention being responsible for the overall welfare of her client, simply to ensure he didn't relapse, of which there was no indiction of how close he was.

"No, I can't leave here without you, come o-"

"It's not your pathetic excuse of a job to babysit me. I will be in in less than two hours, you have seen me whole and in person and I am fine, so just _leave me alone._" Sherlock knew he had made the wrong approach as soon as his snarling retort left his mouth, because if there was one thing about the far-from-pathetic Joan Watson, it was that she didn't give up easily. Not without a fight.

She sighed, reading her mental stance for another battle of the wit. "Look, can we do this inside? I can see you're going through something personal, and we don't have to talk about it now, but the fact is that you're going to catch pneumonia if you stay out here any longer, and although you'd be perfectly fine going to a crime scene like that, I won't let you infect the entire police department just because you're too stubborn to listen to some common sense."

Silence was the brooding man's only response. Joan decided to take matters into her own hands... literally. "Okay," she mused defiantly, "looks like we're going to have to do this the hard way."

She grabbed Sherlock's arms, each in a coat pocket, and pulled him backward from the ledge with all of the force she could muster. Joan was much stronger than she looked, but trying to drag an unwilling grown man six inches taller than you (with heels) from a ledge in heavy snowfall can be a bit of a challenge.

Joan expected some verbal defiance, sarcastic comments. The usual. What she didn't expect was an unhindered yelp of pain as she made contact with the crook of his left elbow. As he hit the ground, he regained his footing, stumbling back from her a few steps. It only took him a second to realize what was missing. Amongst the disturbed snow was a heroin-filled syringe, and it was only a split second after Sherlock's realization that Joan caught his wide-eyed panic and followed his gaze. But by this time, Sherlock had already dove for his prized possession.

"Sherlock!" She screamed as he sprinted back towards the door, prying it shut with his frost-bitten fingers before slamming it shut behind him, Joan just a few feet away.

Author's Note: Sorry for the short chapter. I wrote this a while ago but never decided on the ending, and now i've yet to write it. In the mean time, any criticism or comments is very much appreciated.


	3. Welcome Home

Well this was an unexpected turn of events. Sherlock had mere seconds to think as he ran down the stairs. However, sheer panic was known to cause lack of coordination (as were wet dress shoes on hard wood), and on the fourth step after the landing, the genius' feet slipped, causing his head to violently connect with the landing. However, Joan had just shut the door leading to the roof and now had a clear view of Sherlock hastily pulling himself to his feet again, swaying slightly, though whether that was due to drugs or an accident, Joan was unsure.

"Sherlock get back here!" She shrieked to no avail, a fiery blend of shock, anger, and pure fear.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and bolted to the nearest bathroom, locking it with the feeling still returning to his hands. He slid down the crack of the bathroom door, his body extra reinforcement for the door. Adrenaline pumped through his veins at a mile a minute; desperately, he tried to catch his breath.

Joan found what room he had locked himself in just seconds after. In vain, she slammed her fist against the door. Her client- her friend needed a voice of reason when he was the farthest from it. She took a deep breath, trying to incorporate her training and use a calmer voice. "Sherlock, open the door. Please. You're not going to be in any trouble, we just need to get you to a hospital."

Through his heavy breaths, he coughed out, "I-I-I'm n-not- I h-haven't done anything yet."

"I'm glad to hear that Sherlock, but we need to keep it that way. So just open the door and give me the syringe."

Sherlock felt a warm trickle down his neck. He gasped as he touched his hand to the wound in the back of his head. He reached for the towel on the rack, applying pressure.

"What's going on?" Joan asked, hearing his pained breath. Meanwhile, she looked around for something to open the door. If Sherlock really hadn't taken anything yet, then it was a very good sign amidst this horrible incident.

"My- my head's bleeding," he replied shakily as he stared at his crimson-stained hand, his lungs still racing. In fact, it seems he couldn't quite get them to calm down. He felt like a caged animal, as though all the air was being vacuumed out of the room, away from him, and he realized that he had _heroin_ in his grasp. For the past six months he'd be re-educated that heroin was the devil, the all-encompassing hydrogen bomb, and in his hand, the detonator.

"Watson, I-I don't think... I can come out," he confessed. He was trapped- in this room, in this cycle of addiction, of recovery, side glances from colleagues and counselor and sober companions and every other person paid to babysit his volatile nature instead of his own fucking parents, and inevitable, pathetic relapse. And more than anything right now, he wanted it to end.

He admitted it- ignorance is bliss. All the encyclopedias memorized, equations solved, solutions created, didn't get him anywhere closer to this distant orb of happiness. The closer he got, the faster he pursued it, the further it went away from him. If drugs were the closest he would ever get, than he'd rather have the sweet nothingness of death.

Sherlock shifted so he was leaning against the middle of the tub. He set down the bloodied towel and heroin and reached into his pocket again, this time retrieving the second, larger syringe with a clear but potent solution in it: fentanyl. One dose of this and Holmes' heart would decelerate to zero in a matter of minutes. He held it up to the light between the fingertips of his hands, and, for the first time since Irene's death, openly sobbed.

He had failed. He had failed the counselors at Hendale, he had failed his father, he had failed Joan, and _he had failed Irene._ He recalled the last night he saw her, the sparkle of her diamond earrings she had worn to her first exhibit at The National Gallery that night, as she shook her head in rage, "How could you choose _heroin_ over _me_?!"

But he hadn't just failed... _they had won._ His greatest fault, and it was one of his own control. At least, he thought, it would be no surprise to the public. He had to hand it to Kathryn Drummond; she had predicted his drug addiction, and now, the climax of his dramatic decline, his, as she put it, "self-annihilation."

"Sherlock," Joan demanded, panic-voiced in response to his cries, rapping on the door thrice, "what's going on?"

He gave no response as he wiped his damp cheeks and shrugged off his coat, preparing himself for his first service to the world in quite a while. He could see the headlines now, "Drug Addict Detective Commits Suicide."

Yes, that was him alright.

Case closed.

"Sherlock!" She nearly screamed, and without a response, she started fervently kicking at the door, just under the lock, as her unwitting teacher in all things investigative had taught her not long ago...

With his minutes now limited, he rolled up his left sleeve, acknowledging the blur of memories that flooded to him at the all-too-familiar action, and tied his tourniquet with one strip in his teeth, wildly pumping his arm so his un-collapsed veins would protrude. He studied his scars and his tracks as they darkened with the trapped blood, ready to feel the relief of a pinprick. _Welcome home_, he thought bitterly.

Author's Note: It seems like I will have one more installment after this! Thank you for all of your support. Please leave constructive criticism in the comments section, and share this story with fellow Elementary lovers.


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